Reeding and Writing (Blog Post #2)

The second half of Reed's text deals with politics, games, education, and accessibility. Chapter 7 discusses how the digital influences voting, campaigning, hacking, and protesting. I thought that the discussion of slactivism was particularly interesting given the myriad of reactions to the extremely popular ALS ice bucket challenge and its impact. My friends in real life (i.e. Facebook) have posted that it is helpful, up-lifting, self-serving, harmful, environmentally unfriendly, and overwhelming (just to name a few). Google search tells me that it is a....satanic ritual? I wish Reed would have spent a bit more time talking about how people are/are not more well-informed and the reasons behind that, as it is interesting to think about that in terms of what we see vs. what we click on vs. the source. To me the main message behind this chapter was that a mix of the digital and non-digital is important, and that the digital should enhance rather than replace. I also enjoyed learning about the games/parody sites that exist (Cybracero was quite good and more than a little scary in its mimicry, and I liked looking at the site in both English and Spanish). It might be an interesting exercise to have students examine the rhetoric going on there...

Chapter 8 addressed the role of digital games, pitting the view that they are violent, sexist, and racist against the claim that they are going to save the world. Given our discussion last week, I do not think many of us will find his conclusions surprising; however, it was interesting to read about Laura Croft, given that I did play that video game when I was young. Looking back, I remember more about her economic situation (wow, this lady has a full-sized pool in her house!) than how her gender impacted game-play, though I do want to know more about dialogue and if that differs between male and female protagonists (I only recall that some of her one-liners were a little odd). Furthermore, while looking at Laura Croft YouTube videos, I found videos related to Beyond Two Souls, one of the games Reed mentions. They discuss the leak of nude shots of Ellen Page's character Jodie, as some systems were apparently able to access alternative camera angles during the shower scene. Sony's response included "please take these down" and "this is not Ellen Page's body". Does it matter? Should it matter? What are the differences between leaking naked photos and leaking naked photos from a game? One of the commentator's statements paraphrased: "This concerns a very pretty woman...well, she is very pretty...well, depending on your taste..." Blah.

Furthermore, I can certainly see the danger of war games. Reed states, "But many argue that this similarity presents the danger of lessening the reality of war, rendering it playful. Even antiwar activists report feeling a certain thrill in being positioned as soldiers during the invasion, a reaction difficult to imagine apart from the messy merging of the real and the simulated via millitainment " (148). How realistic should these games be? How does that affect the portrayal of America to Americans? To others? I am also really curious about how the video games help veterans and which ones are used (or if it matters). In other words, why is this chapter so short?

Chapter 9 talks about the use of the digital in education, concluding that good technology use in the classroom requires good teachers (ba duh duh). However, I do wonder how that relates to university education and the TA system, where standardization and training becomes an issue. I think it is also important to consider the history of teaching and what technologies have been used. Reed mentions that few teachers are great lecturers (169), but I wonder if that understates the difficulty of leading a good discussion and planning interactive activities. I also like the distinction between teaching how to use technology and teaching to learn with technology; however, it seems to me as if you have to teach the how before you can get to the learning. This also fails to address access on the level of the students or the level of the university. On the other hand, I agree with many of Reed's points about publishing as a business:

Innovations in the digitization of educational resources  raise the larger question of whether knowledge is something that should be hoarded and made financially inaccessible to all but the few (the business model), or a human right that should be available to anyone with the intellectual skills to benefit from it, regardless of ability and pay (177).

In other words, it sucks to do "academic work" (with all the discussion that could come with the use of that term) without being associated with a university. Trust me.

The last chapter considers who is able to access technology, and I appreciated the breakdown of the digital divide in terms of digital resources, human resources, and community resources as well as the physical requirements needed for accessibility. When I traveled to Guatemala this summer, it was very rare for anyone to have internet in their home, but there were at least four internet cafes on our street, and the customers were predominantly young people and, of course, tourists. Thus, it was certainly more of a communal experience than in the United States, and, because you had to directly pay for time, people were less likely to go for leisure or to "surf the web."  Many people saw a direct connection between technology and the loss of their culture, including the traditional dress.

It was also interesting to think about how we might all be connected and then have "nothing" to talk about. I would like to know  more about what people thought of Power's quote  concerning technology: "The web was a neighborhood more efficiently lonely than the one it replaced. Its solitude was bigger and faster...it seems to me we'd still have nothing to say to each  other and more ways not to say it"(190). Sometimes, I think I agree.